World's Finest: The Bertinelli Question Answered Once And For All...

*Sigh* Another one of the female members of the female Bat Family members has bitten the dust, it appears. Though the question not arises as to whether Dinah, Barbara etc. know what happened to the original Helena, since Fake!Helena has been impersonating her for an unknown amount of time.

Honestly I spent literally all night raging over this that I don't think there are enough words in the world to fully express how sick to my stomach this makes me feel. Overall, my upset can be summed up in three words: insensitive, disrespectful, and downright cruel.

After that, all I can feel is depressed. I couldn't even enjoy the slash from the "I've got something to show you" panel, and even now I don't know how I'll feel after reading the rest of the issue.

Given the "mafia princess" thing, I choose to believe that Bertinelli's "death" was actually a cover for her going into witness protection. Wayne took over the identity which the feds decided was fine as that meant no one would look too closely at the faked death ("of course it was faked, see, Helena Bertinelli is walking around Gotham alive!") and keep their witness even better protected.

*sigh* this makes me sad.... i sorta ignored the first line where she says "Alas poor miss bertinelli... she served me well." and went straight to "She was REAL you know... interesting life..."" and felt he was TRYING to be respectful... then reading it again, it just feels like a punch to the face and then a kick to the crotch...

my only hope is that Helena B is somehow still alive (faking her death) and will come back as Earth 1 Huntress

Okay, it's Helena Wayne, they want to make sure that is the approach from now on, I can get that. Burning the passport seems to be a rather mean way of doing it, though.

"Though the question not arises as to whether Dinah, Barbara etc. know what happened to the original Helena, since Fake!Helena has been impersonating her for an unknown amount of time."

Well, Levitz said that the two have been stuck on this Earth for five years, apparently happening during the Darkseid invasion--so who's to say that maybe a more secretive Helena Wayne, disguised as Bartenelli, didn't help out a certain Black Canary or even had a hacker friend that got her good intel?

So, for Earth-2, Lois and Selina have died so their husbands can angst (a Batman tormented and driven by the loss of a loved one? How original!), and Helena B. died off panel at some point so Helena W. could have a secret identity?

Which also doesn't make Helena W. and Power Girl come off too well since they're casually flipping through other (possibly dead) women's passports. Are we really supposed to believe the daughter of Batman and Catwoman couldn't come up with a fake identity on her own?

In the old universe, Helena Bertinelli was a real woman with her own story arcs, friends, relationships, etc. In the DCnU, they reduce that to "she was real, but I stole her identity and she's dead. Dead dead dead." from Helena Wayne.

It isn't exactly a great send-off to the woman who has been the Huntress for the last 22 years.

You know, I haven't broken this one out in *quite* a while now. I've fought *very* hard to avoid my urge to use it towards the way that DCnU has turned out to be everything I expected--a horrible mashup of Silver Age fetishism with 90s gratuitous violence, plus a healthy dose of misogyny and fridging. But between this and Harley being killed off?

Yeah.

(And the only reason I didn't include the Aoki cluster-F-bomb is that I think I got a warning for using it last time.)

Actually, I'm happy about this - it confirms that Helena Bertinelli did exist as a real person, and not just as a made-up alias. Sure, Ms. Wayne says she's dead, but this is comics - Helena's not really dead until we see the body.

I still want Batwing in trade, and perhaps Demon Knights since I've read things that might please me, but I think that when I'll be done finding the old pre-New 52 trades on my list, I'll be pretty much done.

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